Bike trail falls into disrepair

NORTHAMPTON - In cycling guidebooks, the Norwottuck Rail
Trail is celebrated as one of New England's premier
bike paths - a 10-mile ramble through woods and wetlands
along an abandoned rail bed.

So why did the trail itself look abandoned on Monday night?

"I used to ride on the streets of Chicago,"
explained Christopher M. Gendron, of Hadley, who was cycling
alone on the Northampton-to-Belchertown trail. "They
were in a lot better shape than this."

Suffering from a bizarre design flaw and years of
maintenance delays, the state-managed bikeway has turned
into a tire-shredding obstacle course for the dwindling
number of cyclists and fitness buffs willing to brave it.

With thick roots punching up from the asphalt and recycled
glass embedded in its surface, the trail is punishing riders
with a combination of injuries, damaged bike frames and flat
tires.

By last fall, most rollerbladers had given up trying to
negotiate the washboard surface. And last month, ambulances
were called to help riders and joggers who broke bones
falling on the cratered pavement, said Robert T. Cobb,
manager of a path-side bike shop in Hadley.

"You hear a lot of jokes about the path," said
Cobb, who runs Trailside Bicycles LLC. "But it's
gotten to the point where it really is dangerous."

The deterioration has been obvious for several years, but
the toll has been especially harsh this spring. With the
repaving of nearby Route 9 in Hadley, some cyclists are
choosing to ride the highway rather than risk their luck
along the 15-year-old path.

The trail's transformation from a top regional tourist
attraction to a boulevard of broken glass can be traced to
two factors.

Basic repairs to the asphalt surface have been postponed since the late 1990s, allowing a root system to poke through that rivals old railroad tracks for riding comfort. Even worse, the crumbling pavement is magnifying the folly of the path's construction - mixing millions of razor-sharp shards of recycled glass into the pavement....